Failed rains and a dire El Niño threaten the waterway that sustains the country, with farmers selling cattle to survive

The cattle should be ambling, grazing contentedly, through Robert Delgado’s fields. Instead, the animals slump in the shade, tongues lolling, in futile attempts to avoid the blistering heat. Soon it will matter little whether their appetite returns, for there will be no grass left to graze.

In Azuero, an agricultural region in Panama’s Arco Seco (Dry Arc), the summer is generally relentless and unforgiving. But this year, the crucial rainy season that precedes it – typically from May to December – has brought little rain to parched fields. The watering holes, streams and rivers that farmers rely on have not been replenished, and pastures – the vital source of animal feed during the dry months – have not regenerated themselves.

In 2022, I helped push through the international agreement to protect biodiversity. Wars and economic pressures can make nature seem like a ‘nice-to-have’. But it is a critical asset, and Cop17 must deliver real action

When I was five, property developers came to cut down the woods behind my home in La Tuque, Quebec. My mother encouraged me to climb one of the trees in protest, then told the developers, straight-faced, that there was nothing she could do when they asked her to get me down. A few days later, the tree was cut down anyway.

I thought about that tree in the early hours of a freezing Montreal morning in December 2022, as the gavel came down on a global agreement between nearly 200 countries to halt and reverse the loss of nature by 2030. I thought about how important nature is for our health, our food security and our economies, but also how much passion there is around protecting it, and how it has the power to inspire people all around the world.

A Belgian criminal organisation’s links with a Brazilian cocaine gang have been the focus of a major trial in Brussels, where smuggling links have been alleged between European players and the drug cartels of Latin America

In the early hours of 7 September, a convoy of heavily armed police swept through the sleeping streets of central Brussels towards the Haren district, on the city’s north-eastern outskirts. They made their way to 22 Avenue du Bourget, a militarised bunker-like complex that was the former headquarters of Nato.

The modernist complex, with its austere and functional architecture, was hastily built in 1967 and houses the Justitia courtroom, where Belgium’s federal trials are now held. It was here that the perpetrators and accomplices of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks and the 2016 Brussels attacks were tried in 2022.

George Graham of Save the Children UK says the government has a clear opportunity to act and ensure that victims of conflict are helped

Amid allegations about advisers dealing with Roman Abramovich’s business affairs (Roman Abramovich aides falsified paperwork to disguise assets and dodge tax, records suggest, 12 October), another issue demands urgent government action – the £2.5bn from the sale of Chelsea FC, which has remained stuck in a Barclays bank account since May 2022.

The money was originally pledged to help victims of the war in Ukraine, no matter where they are in the world. Yet for over four years this huge sum of money has sat in limbo, accruing interest while victims of conflict go without desperately needed support. At a time of global aid cuts, rising food insecurity and growing humanitarian needs, the £2.5bn could make a transformative difference to the children and families we serve around the world.

Bank’s chief knowledge officer says the tech could speed up economic development from centuries to decades

The World Bank is urging developing countries to kickstart the creation of “small AI” models, which can run on a mobile phone with low connectivity, to reap the full benefits of artificial intelligence.

While Silicon Valley big tech firms are focused on ever more sophisticated consumer products, Paschal Donohoe, the World Bank’s chief knowledge officer, said AI could also accelerate development for emerging economies – but only if it was adapted to local needs.

As civil war has left their country in ruins, many young Sudanese have turned to artisanal mining. An airstrike on a mine last week killed more than 100 and has provoked anger against Egypt, seen as the most likely suspect

Torches still fixed on their heads but tools cast aside, the Sudanese goldminers of the North Valley had already mounted an impromptu rescue operation by the time Ammar* arrived at the site of a suspected Egyptian airstrike.

At least 114 were killed, according to the Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers, in the strike on Saturday 10 October on an artisanal goldmine brimming with young Sudanese trying to eke out a living in a country where the economy has been shattered by three years of war.

Modern politicians play on tales of empire to exaggerate what Britain left behind, but the monarch should consider a historical speech on imperial plunder

For us in the Caribbean, there is something surreal about Britain’s renewed nostalgia over empire. As Britain’s monarch prepares to visit the Caribbean, and at a time when we in the former colonies are demanding to have a serious reckoning with slavery and reparations, UK politicians are invoking a dumbed-down distortion of history.

Rewriting the facts: the Reform MP Robert Jenrick has argued that colonies owed Britain a “debt of gratitude” for the institutions empire bequeathed them. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former minister in a Conservative government, has described British colonialism as “one of the greatest civilising, prosperity-creating forces the world has ever seen”. The opposition leader, Kemi Badenoch, has disputed colonialism’s contribution to Britain’s prosperity. Then there is Suella Braverman. The Reform MP suggested in July that rather than Britain paying reparations, former colonies should repay Britain for the investment and infrastructure provided under empire. This prompted Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, to call that proposition “asinine”. At best it is historical amnesia. At its worse it is an insidious misrepresentation of facts.

Use of death penalty against people for crimes committed when they were children a ‘new low’, say rights groups

A young man faces imminent execution in Saudi Arabia for attending protests and funerals when he was aged 15 to 17, say human rights groups, in the latest example of the kingdom’s surging use of the death penalty for non-violent crimes.

Youssef al-Manasif was arrested in 2017 and accused of crimes including joining demonstrations for religious freedom by the Shia minority and attending funerals that the Saudi authorities deem to be protests. He was convicted and sentenced to death by the specialised criminal court, a secretive tribunal set up for terrorism-related cases.

Families in Vaca Muerta, the centre of Patagonia’s shale operation, report cancers, miscarriages and pollution

In Allen, a small town in Argentine Patagonia, many people living on the same street ended up falling ill. For some, it was severe migraines, nausea or skin irritation. For others, cancers, congenital abnormalities, miscarriages or stillbirth seemed to affect foetuses or children. People say it all started 13 years ago – when a well was drilled near their homes to extract gas and oil.

Calle Ciega 10 [Dead-end Street 10] lies on the eastern edge of Vaca Muerta, a vital area for Argentina’s economy, home to the world’s second-largest reserve of shale gas and fourth-largest reserve of shale oil. The region has more than 2,600 active wells, including one on this small street where about 20 families live, most of them seasonal workers on fruit farms.

At least 320 people detained for ‘acts against nature’ after law criminalising homosexuality toughened, HRW reports

Mass arrests, forced HIV testing and barriers to legal representation are part of an escalating crackdown against LGBTQ+ people in Senegal, according to a new report.

More than 320 individuals have been arrested and detained on allegations of “acts against nature” since February, according to HIV Justice Network, an organisation quoted in the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report. Among these, at least 84 were charged with “voluntary HIV transmission”, solely on the basis of their HIV status.

As climate breakdown pushes families to starvation, many feel forced to ‘sacrifice’ daughters to save siblings. Photographer Elise Blanchard travelled the country speaking to girls as young as eight, 10 and 14 who have been engaged or married to repay debts or pay for food

‘I’m not happy about this,” says 11-year-old Khatira, who was sold into marriage to repay debts, sitting in her home in Qala-e-Naw, capital of Badghis province in north-west Afghanistan. “She was healthy before her engagement, now she is worried and cries a lot,” says her 40-year-old mother, Noor Bibi.

When her 20-year-old husband-to-be comes to her home, Khatira runs away. Since her engagement, she has stopped going outside because she “is ashamed of having a husband in front of the other girls”, says her mother.

Shepherds watch over their sheep in the hills of Bala-Murghab, Badghis province, north-west Afghanistan. By March, the pasture was already too dry for the season

Cultivating the nutritious bugs means families can raise livestock and enrich their own food, while lowering pressures on the land

A few minutes’ walk from his home in the Kyaka II refugee settlement, Kanane Bikanyale feeds black soldier fly larvae to chickens in a coop above a fishpond. The larvae disappear in a scrum of chickens. Nearby, more larvae grow in modified jerrycans, while adult flies are kept in netted boxes.

Bikanyale kept chickens before he fled to Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But the cost of conventional feed and shortages of ingredients made them increasingly difficult to raise – a widespread pressure for millions of smallholder farmers whose margins are tight.

Kanane Bikanyale tends to his black soldier fly larvae in a rearing unit in the Kyaka II refugee camp in Uganda

Drawing on dozens of interviews with intelligence and police officers across two continents, a Guardian investigation reveals the murderous cost of our insatiable appetite for cocaine

Read more: Latin American organised crime ‘may operate in 16 European countries’
Explainer: What is state capture and why does it matter?

As abductions go, few have been more brazen. Alan Jalloh was with two friends outside Goodies supermarket, frantic as usual with late afternoon shoppers. Rush hour in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, was under way with familiar gusto.

A black Toyota Rav4 forced its way through the Peninsula highway traffic. Witnesses describe burly white men leaping out, yanking on balaclavas. Jalloh, 40, seemed to freeze. As did his two friends, one a famous Freetown footballer. All three were dragged into the waiting SUV. None of them have been seen since.

Rights groups warn of Tehran regime’s increasing use of executions to suppress dissent, with at least 600 this year

Human rights groups have raised the alarm over the growing number of death sentences and executions in Iran, after reports that a 23-year-old woman, Najmeh Amini, has been sentenced to death for blasphemy over a social-media post.

Amini, an accounting student, is being held in Vakilabad prison in the north-east city of Mashhad. She has been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison and death in separate cases heard by a revolutionary and a criminal court.

Cocaine seizures in Europe are up more than fivefold in 10 years as a host of cartels take root. A four-month Guardian investigation reveals the true scale of a continent-wide shift

A four-month investigation by the Guardian has revealed that the surge in cocaine trafficking to Europe is directly linked to the expanding presence of Latin American criminal networks in Europe, where they have forged close ties with local mafia organisations.

The investigation, utilising databases, police and intelligence agencies, along with interviews with judges, prosecutors and experts from eight countries, shows that cartels and factions from Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico and the US are active in at least 12 European countries. Between 2014 and 2024, there was a 471% rise in the quantity of cocaine seized and more local laboratories processing cocaine derivatives were dismantled.

Newly established commission identifies 17 catastrophic threats to human health but says ‘realistic route to act’ on each exists

Humans could become extinct by the year 2100 due to malicious use of AI or nuclear conflict, according to a new global risk assessment.

They top a list of 17 major threats to human health over the next 75 years, which also includes cuts to aid spending by wealthy countries, the climate crisis and childhood malnutrition.

Plans for a 200-room project on an unspoiled beach have pitted developers against the conservationists fighting for smaller-scale schemes to protect the island’s habitat

Visitors to Rocky Point in south-west Tobago are drawn to its sandy beach, fringed by coral reefs and dark rock formations and carpeted with the fruit-bearing trees found on Caribbean coastlines – almonds, sea grapes, coconuts, and the poisonous manchineel. The beach is part of Back Bay, a 500-metre swathe of land, and trekking through its undulating terrain, thickly covered in bush and shrubs, feels akin to walking through a rainforest.

But this still relatively unspoiled location is at the centre of a struggle between two opposing interests – those who see large-scale development as the most profitable path and those who believe smaller, incremental developments owned by the community would be best.

Matsadaash staff allege torture and forced confessions after being held on charges of working for Muslim Brotherhood

Egyptian journalists are planning a new protest in Cairo this weekend after six colleagues were charged with terrorism offences amid allegations they had been tortured in police detention.

Last week, Egyptian authorities arrested the journalists, from the independent factchecking and investigative platform Matsadaash, accusing them in a statement of being unlicensed and producing false news on behalf of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

With cancer cases rising fastest in poorer countries, Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu, president-elect of the Union for International Cancer Control, says Africa needs investment in research, diagnosis and prevention

When Dr Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu last saw Gloria in Abuja, the young breast cancer patient was so ill that she was in hospital. The cancer had spread to her bones and lungs, and she was struggling with complications from the disease.

Then, at a global conference on cancer thousands of miles away in Hong Kong last month, Bagudu saw her again. Gloria was walking with a stick because of the cancer in her hips, but she was attending sessions, speaking about her experience and advocating for other patients.

The Ethiopian photographer Sosina Mengistu’s self-portraits draw on personal experience to reflect young people’s anxiety and frustration

This self-portrait is part of my project So I See Me, which I began in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic and continue to this day. The title reflects the central idea: using the camera to look at myself. But it also carries a subtle echo of my name, Sosina.

When the pandemic started, I was in my final year of an engineering degree at the University of Gondar in Ethiopia. I was excited to graduate and begin the next chapter of my life, then everything suddenly came to a halt. Thinking the travel restrictions would only last for a short time, I decided to stay with my uncle in Bahir Dar in the north rather than travel back to my home town, Asosa, more than 450 miles to the west. I ended up stuck there for eight months.

I was sentenced to three years in jail for insulting government institutions. Now I am free, I will carry on fighting for the women I met in prison

‘Why don’t you just drive your tuk-tuk and do your work?” the judge asked me after videos from my social media accounts were shown during my court hearing. I had spoken on TikTok and Facebook about issues in Somalia that concerned me: forced evictions in the capital, Mogadishu, high fuel prices and nepotism in government.

I had described how, when I applied for work in hospitals and government departments, I was told on three occasions that I’d have to give a sexual favour in return.

The country’s far-right president is courting billionaire investors by removing a block on foreign ownership of land and natural resources

On 19 September, Marta Sahores, an 84-year-old chemistry professor and activist who has mobilised against mega-mining projects for more than two decades, took to the streets in Argentina. Alongside workers, retirees, students, Indigenous groups and human rights organisations, Sahores was there to protest against the country’s far-right president, Javier Milei. During the marcha de la bronca – the “march of anger” – protesters held signs reading, among other rallying cries, “The land is not for sale”.

Marching in Esquel, a town nestled in the foothills of the Andes in Chubut province, she also held up a sign defending the country’s water resources against what she called the government’s “handover” to investors.